


Missing

by talkingtothesky



Category: Lost, Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Season/Series 04, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-03-15 20:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3461489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/pseuds/talkingtothesky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harold flies to Hong Kong to meet up with Beth Bridges a second time. His plane never makes it there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set after 6x18 (The End) for _Lost_ , after 4x06 (Pretenders) but before 4x11 for _Person of Interest_.
> 
> Rating will hopefully go up in later chapters.

 

"You still haven't told me exactly what you're meeting this Beth _for_."

 

Harold ignored the playful jealous undertone in John's voice, smoothing a hand down his shirtfront. "She could be a useful contact inside Samaritan. There's nothing more to tell."

 

Reese gave him one last hug. "Call me the second you land, let me know you got there safely, ok?"

 

"Of course I will."

 

\---

 

There was a slight hiccup at the check-in desk. The young woman smiled brightly at Harold and informed him he'd been upgraded to first class.

 

He tried to protest. "There must be some mistake." Not that he would mind, but Samaritan might notice.

 

"No." She checked the screen again. "Harold Whistler, date of birth..." She cross-checked it against his passport. "It's all been paid for. You must have a generous boss."

 

Harold quietly snorted. He highly doubted that. "I'm only a college professor."

 

"A Professor!" She was genuinely impressed. "Wowww. I wanted to teach, once. Couldn't finish my degree."

 

"Oh, I'm sure you could still make it." He said, politely.

 

She flushed with the praise. Then she seemed to realise there was a queue forming behind him. "Sorry." She handed him his new boarding pass. "Gate 26."

 

"Thank you."

 

He glared in the direction of the next camera he passed. What was the Machine playing at, risking his cover like that?

 

His consternation deepened when he got on the plane and found he was the only person seated in first class. Perhaps it wanted to grant him some privacy, but even so.

 

The next four hours passed uneventfully, Harold dutifully grading papers and switching tracks to fiddle with some code whenever his students' meagre efforts got so dull they threatened to send him to sleep. Despite his efforts to stay awake, he found himself jolted out of a sort of half-doze, in which he had fondly imagined Reese stroking his hair, when the plane dipped suddenly forwards. His computer nearly slid off his knees - he caught it just in time, shut the lid and stowed it away in its carry case. Moments later, a stewardess staggered in and advised him to do up his seat-belt. Harold checked, he hadn't unfastened it since take-off. She gave him a thumbs-up and disappeared back into economy class. He never saw her again.

 

\---

 

He woke up to ferocious heat. Sometimes during the night, John would drape his tall, sleeping form on top of Harold, sheets drawn up over both their heads so that when he woke, Harold could barely breathe. But that stifling sweet warmth was heaven compared to this. There was an acrid taste in the back of his throat, something hard and scratchy beneath him. His skin felt raw. He poked cautiously around with his fingers. Particles stuck to him. He was lying on sand.

 

Harold cracked his eyes open, expecting only a blur, since he remembered his glasses had come off in the crash. Instead he was greeted with the most stunning view of the night sky he had ever seen outside of a NASA telescope. He lay and gazed up at the stars for a minute or two, marvelling at the difference a total lack of light pollution made, having lived so many years in New York and grown used to it. Then he became aware that the ground around him was on fire. He sat up quickly, got to his feet. He anticipated a wave of pain from his spine and hip but nothing happened - he must be in shock.

 

And no wonder. The front section of the plane was warped and burning merrily, the rest of it nowhere to be seen. Dotted across the sand, pieces of debris were also caught in flame. He couldn't see anyone else on the beach, but it was dark. "Hello?" He called out, shakily. No answer came, apart from the night-time noises of a few tropical birds. Surely he couldn't be the only survivor. He wasn't prepared to go through that much guilt again.

 

Remembering Nathan in turn made him think of John, and -  _call me the second you land_. Harold hurriedly patted down his torn jacket, gasping in relief when he felt the solid weight of the satellite phone in his pocket. He pulled it out, held it up. The screen was cracked and dark. He held down the power button hard and didn't let go until it flickered. Then immediately died. Harold tried it again with worse results. He groaned, despairing. By the light of a small fire he checked his watch, which  _wasn't_  broken. It was still set to New York time; it read 10:32pm. He'd boarded at 9am, and the last time he remembered checking the clock before the plane began to fall it had been around half-one...that meant he'd been lying unconscious on the beach for at least eight hours. That explained why his skin felt so awful, too. He must have caught sunburn.

 

He stuffed the phone back into his pocket and limped towards the wreckage of the plane. He pushed past the waves of heat which the sea breeze threatened to waft in his direction, determined to find someone he could help, something he could use. The cockpit itself wasn't on fire, and as Harold drew close enough he could make out the shapes of two people inside. Two bodies inside, he had to amend that to, having leaned in through the smashed windows and checked for their pulses, in case they were still merely unconscious, like he had been. "I'm so sorry," he murmured. Then he turned his back and walked up the beach again, sank down to sit in the sand away from the fires. He dropped his head into his hands.

 

\---

 

Coming out of the precinct at the end of his shift, Detective John Riley checked his phone for the hundredth time that day.  _Maybe he's just forgotten_ , he tried yet again to reassure himself. Finch was probably busy charming the pants off this Elizabeth Bridges woman. Reese had done an internet search on her the first time Harold went to that conference and told John his real reason for going. She was exactly Harold's type. If she'd dyed her hair slightly redder she would have been just like Grace. Grace plus extensive knowledge of math, business and computers.

 

John trusted Finch. He wasn't feeling remotely threatened. He sighed and headed for the subway.

 

Root was there. Her arm was still in a sling from getting shot by Martine. Today she and Shaw had been working their latest number together while he and Lionel were busy with urgent police business.

 

"How's it going?" He asked her.

 

"Shaw's still following the kid around. Oh, you look miserable." She pointed out when she turned and saw him. "Didn't he call? Awww, diddums."

 

John narrowed his eyes at her, then stalked over to the weapons cache in the wall. A round of gun cleaning might help to settle his nerves. He'd just about got set up on the little table inside the train car when Root called from the big desk: "What was his flight number?"

 

"HKG481516 A234." John reeled off, automatically. Not that he had it memorised on purpose.

 

"It's gone missing." Root said.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

He wasn't sure how he made it through the night, but before he knew it Finch was gazing numbly at a stunning panorama of the sun peeking over the horizon and colouring the ocean orange with its reflection. If Grace had been here, she would have loved that view. The fires had died down overnight, leaving the air cooler and easier to breathe in. Once he had enough light to see clearly, Harold took out both the sat phone and his cell. The latter still had power but no chance of a signal whatsoever, secure or otherwise. And then it hit him. No camera could see him here. For the first time in years he was totally unobserved. Truly alone.

 

He scratched at the bridge of his peeling nose. He really was burnt quite badly. Retreating to the natural shade provided by the trees, he removed his jacket and laid it out on the sand. He set down both phones on the silk lining, then took the back off the sat phone. As soon as he did so, it was obvious what was wrong. This model had at least thirty hours of standby battery life, it wouldn't have run out so quickly. But the impact of crash landing had caused the battery pack to fracture, the contents spilling out and potentially damaging the rest of the circuitry. Careful not to touch the corrosive substance with his bare skin, he shook the phone until the ruined battery fell out onto his jacket - with regret, but he probably wouldn't need it anymore, in this heat. With his pocket square he cleaned out the inside of the phone. After that, he was stuck. He couldn't substitute the cell phone battery into the sat phone, it was far too small. More as a way to occupy himself than as part of a solid plan, he dismantled the smaller phone by hand, laying out the components in neat rows.

 

Eventually the pressing need for food and fresh water forced him to stop work and venture into the jungle. He'd heard the birds calling last night and at dawn, but he wasn't prepared to see them, in their sheer variety and colours, flitting from branch to branch and retreating into nests as he stumbled clumsily by. He'd expected the macaws, but the doves? He'd also seen several canaries and a red-crested cardinal. He caught glimpses of a few species which he didn't recognise - wherever this island was, it was an ornithological goldmine. Harold wished he had someone with him to explain all this to - John probably wouldn't have understood his enthusiasm, but he would have listened attentively, and been glad to share in something which Harold was passionate about.

 

The further into the jungle he ventured, the more oppressive the heat became. He took off his tie and shoved it into his pocket, thumbed open the top few buttons on his shirt. The ground grew more difficult to navigate; his expensive shoes hadn't much grip in the mud. But he kept going, reaching higher ground. The strenuous walk wasn't paining his hip yet.

 

He stopped to take a leak. When he was done he turned a corner and found he'd finally come across an area with trees that were abundant with ripe fruit. With great relief he plucked a mango and gouged into it with the end of a sharp branch. The juice was such a relief going down his parched throat. By the time he'd eaten enough to satisfy his hunger and thirst, he'd had an idea. It was a long shot, but using the fruit and by cannibalizing the plane wreckage for electrical wiring, some copper, and aluminum bolts, he could rig up a crude power source to keep the cell phone battery going and wire it to the satellite phone. He returned to the beach with his arms full of mangoes, carrying a renewed sense of purpose in his heart.

 

\---

 

John spent the next three hours on the phone to various harassed employees of Air Traffic Control on both sides of the Pacific. The higher up the pecking order in Hong Kong he climbed, the more he found himself yelling in rapid Chinese - he was glad Kara had taught him. Nobody seemed to know when or where the plane had lost contact, or if they did know they weren't telling him, which John liked even less. The few details he had pieced together were eerily similar to a famous plane crash from ten years ago. Even John had heard of flight 815, cut off from the world as he had been back then, deep in covert missions and not giving much of a damn about anything other than his own self-pity. No black box activation detected, no traces of wreckage found in the ocean along the plane's planned flight path. It was early days yet, but if Harold was shivering in the sea somewhere he might not have that kind of time.

 

And the Machine had given them no warning.

 

"With all due respect, sir, we are _not_ Oceanic." Some smug bastard in Florida was telling him. He owned the airline Finch had flown with. Reese swore at him viciously and put the phone down.

 

"That's not helping." Root sighed, genuinely sympathetic. He'd preferred it when she was mocking him. She tapped a black-painted fingernail against her front teeth and continued: "You're not going to like this."

 

"What is it." He gritted out, so tense he was unable to produce the upward inflection which would have made it a question. He leant on his fists against the desk beside her, peering at the screens. She'd been scrolling through airport security footage on Harold's plane, checking back for tampering or anything at all suspicious. She zoomed in on a figure wearing hi-vis gear, helping to load luggage into the hold. It was Lambert.

 

Root and John turned to look at each other. "Samaritan crashed the plane?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry there's no Ben yet! He will appear very soon. :D


	3. Chapter 3

Harold's fruit battery plan ended up being a bust. The sat phone needed at least twelve-to-fifteen volts to function. Even with a whole cache of mango-powered circuits, he was probably producing about two volts in total if he was lucky. And he'd run out of copper coins.

 

His search of the burnt-out fuselage did produce one victory, however. Although the black box showed signs of being tampered with, an underwater locator beacon attached to the fuselage remained intact. Harold carefully removed it from its protective housing and tossed it as hard as he could into the ocean. Once submerged it would begin to emit pulses.

 

The Machine had known he was going to crash, that was the only explanation for it changing his ticket. It wouldn't have spit out his number because he'd trained it not to, but what of the other passengers? John would know something was wrong by now, surely. He was going to be insufferable, if - when - Harold saw him again. He would be unable to let Harold out of his sight for quite some time.

 

Finch was slowly acclimatizing to the heat, but it remained oppressive. He rolled up his sleeves, removed his vest and wished for something to read to pass the time.

 

\---

 

On his next foray into the jungle he heard unfamiliar footsteps crunching over leaves. Considering how lonely he'd felt since he arrived, he should have been more relieved and less terrified to find that he was not alone on the island. As it happened, his instinct was to hide, but where? Amongst the thin trees he was not exactly easy to camouflage in his light blue shirt, pale skin and dark trousers. This moment's indecision cost him. He was still standing in plain sight when a man emerged ahead of him, carrying a rifle slung from a strap across one shoulder. What was worse: he looked exactly like Harold himself. Quick as a flash, the man had the gun pointed at him. He didn't look surprised to see Harold, just angry. Harold slowly put his hands up.

 

"You can't copy me, I'm not dead yet." His doppelganger said.

 

Harold blinked, beginning to think he must be hallucinating. He hadn't been drinking enough water. "What?"

 

\---

 

Hurley checked that the last of the camp were all settled down for the night and didn't need anything before heading back to the Pearl with some beers. The Pearl had been converted from a cramped, dusty experiment place to serve the same purpose as The Flame, the one that Locke blew up with C4. Before he became...not-Locke, that was. It had all the cameras and communications equipment so they could monitor the news from the rest of the world, get in touch with people out there if they absolutely had to. And it had kinda become a place where he and Ben would just hang out.

 

They hadn't crashed this plane. There had been no electromagnetic catastrophes since he and Ben took over. Ben wasn't allowed to do stupid shit and Hurley was learning the ropes of leadership pretty well. The occasional boat got washed up here; they helped the lost sailors out and sent them on their way. Flight 234's survivors were understandably shook up, so Hurley had answered all their questions and suggested they rest while he sorted out transport for them to get off the island. So far Ben hadn't been able to get another sub for island use so it was all planes and boats, and it had to be small ones or the island wouldn't let them go. There was no obligation for them to stay if they didn't want to, that wasn't how Hurley ran things, but some of them were glad of the break from their real lives and wanted to stick around a bit longer - that was cool too.

 

"Thanks, Hugo." Ben accepted the drink, a bit distracted by the screens in front of him.

 

"What are you looking for?" Hurley plonked himself down into a swivelly chair and took a swig of beer.

 

"Remember when we checked the front section of the plane for survivors and found nobody?" He zoomed in - there was a coat lying in the sand that hadn't been there twenty-four hours previously.

 

"Someone's out there? Someone we missed when we were helping that lot?"

 

"It would seem so."

 

A moment later the camera refocused. There was movement right at the edge of the jungle. A figure appeared, carrying a pile of mangoes and smiling inanely to himself. But that wasn't the weirdest thing. He looked just like _Ben_.

 

"Whoa. How can you be in two places at once?"

 

Beside him, Ben had gone very still. The beer can in his hand suddenly crumpled and spilled everywhere. He threw it on the floor and got to his feet, staring at his own image in the screens.

 

"That son of a bitch," he snarled, and raced out of the Pearl.

 

"Ben, wait!"

 

\---

 

"Did you pretend you were gone for long enough that I would _finally_ feel safe and then abandon his body to come back and haunt me with _myself_?"

 

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

  
"You would say that." The rifle was cocked expertly.

 

"Ok, ok." Harold took a deep breath. He was nervous, but also finding it terribly amusing for some reason. He was far from home, where he and his friends were being hunted down by a hostile ASI. Finding himself stranded on a desert island, the only other person he'd encountered looked like a mirror image of himself and wanted to kill him. He must be terribly unlucky. "Did I finally breach the space-time continuum? Are you me from the future?" Humour probably wasn't his best defence at a time like this, but the situation was so bizarre that it seemed as appropriate a response as any. Besides, he was hardly going to _beg_.

 

The man with the gun scowled. "Turn around." He ordered, jerking the barrel of the gun to one side.

 

"You'll understand if I don't particularly want to put my back to you right now." Hallucination or not, this man seemed intent on harming him for some mistaken revenge. It was like he was carrying on a conversation with someone that he'd been having for years, only Harold wasn't privy to any of the details.

 

"Just do it." His double hissed.

 

Harold kept his hands palm outward and turned. He half expected a bullet through his brain a second later, but another command was directed at him instead.

 

"Walk. Back onto the beach."

 

Harold walked. It was more difficult to balance, clambering over tree roots and ant hills with his hands in the air. When his arms got tired he interlaced his fingers at the back of his head. Upon emerging from the jungle he was made to kneel in the sand, still facing away, and Harold thought it was probably time to attempt negotiation.

 

"How can I prove I'm not who you think I am if I don't _know_ who you think I am?"

 

His doppelganger thought for a moment, and then recited: "What lies in the shadow of the statue?"

 

Harold supposed this was some kind of password. "I don't know."

 

"We went there together. You _led_ me there. You made me kill Jacob. And then you killed the rest. Why didn't you kill me too?"

 

"I don't know any Jacob."

 

"You hated him. He was your brother. He was _better_ than you." The man spat. Whoever he was talking to, he wanted to incite a rise out of him.

 

Harold kept his voice as plain and level as possible. "This is all unintelligible to me."

 

"You were that good at pretending last time. It takes a lot of cunning to fool another lifelong liar."

 

The hairs on the back of Harold's neck pricked up. That was....he _had_ been lying about who he was all his life. But he hadn't done whatever the hell this lunatic was raving about. He'd admitted to killing someone called Jacob and the way he handled a gun suggested he was someone not only familiar but _at ease_ with killing. Harold had spent long enough around John to know the difference.

 

"Ben, stop!" A shout across the beach made them both look up. A hundred yards away an overweight curly-haired man was running towards them, frantically waving something in his hand. "He's not the smoke monster! He was on the plaaane!" They watched as he made his way across the sand to reach them. As soon as he stopped he bent double, sweat pouring down his face as he caught his breath.

 

"Hugo," said Harold's double - Ben, apparently - in an altogether different tone of voice than the one he'd been using with Harold. "You'd better be right about that."

 

Hugo dropped a file of papers in the sand in front of him, slightly crumpled where they had been clenched in his fist. "I checked the manifest." He panted. "He's there as Harold Whistler. But then when I researched him like you showed me? All this other stuff came up."

 

The safety clicked back into place on the rifle. Harold let out a shaky, relieved breath. Ben pressed his hand hard to the nape of Harold's neck and intoned "Stay there." He stepped around him to pick up the file, then retreated out of his line of sight again. Figuring he was safe to turn now that the gun was no longer trained on him, Harold peered at Ben over his shoulder. The man was leafing through Hugo's documents with impressive speed, intelligent eyes scanning.

 

"We both know Smokey didn't have those kinds of skills. You said he hated technology." Hugo told Ben.

 

Ben ignored this, addressing Harold directly. "You have more passports than I ever did on the mainland. Care to explain that?"

 

Harold couldn't.

 

"It says here you had spinal surgery. Huh. Fused vertebrae? Pins either side of your neck..."

 

Ben and Harold both realised something different simultaneously. Harold was _looking back at him_ over his shoulder. He had turned his head to do so, but not his knees or torso. He hadn't felt a single twinge in his hip since the crash.

 

Ben's face had lit up with a mixture of wonder and trepidation. "It _healed_ you. Did you have a limp before you came here?"

 

Harold didn't answer.

 

"Hugo, is he Chosen?"

 

Hugo looked baffled. "How should I know? You're the one who's supposed to know all this crap."

 

Ben was glaring at him.

 

Hugo sighed, straightened up from his exhausted crouch. Preparing for another trek across the island, no doubt. "I'll go ask the light."

 

Harold did not have a clue what any of that meant, but he did understand that Hugo going away was a bad idea. "You can't leave me alone with him again!"

 

Hugo paused, glanced between them. "Fair point. Ben, what did we say about guns?" He held out his hand for the rifle.

 

Ben groaned. "Fiiiiine." He handed it over with a reluctant expression which strongly reminded Harold of Ms Shaw.

 

Hugo slung the rifle over his own shoulder and then offered a hand to help Harold up. Harold took it, getting gingerly to his feet.

 

"Welcome to the island, dude. I'm Hurley. Only he calls me Hugo." He indicated Ben, who was now looking not very scary at all. A little put-upon, instead.

 

Harold fell into step between them. "Who are you people? You weren't on the plane."

 

It was Ben who answered him. "No, we live here. The survivors from the tail section of your plane are further inland, we'll take you to them."

 

"There were others? Oh, thank _god_."

 

\---

 

Another hour later, Shaw had wrapped things up with the latest number. John was still pacing their secret base like a caged black leopard.

 

Fifteen minutes ago Root had found something they could use. The rescue teams had picked up an underwater signal.

 

"Since Oceanic 815, passenger jets now have ULBs, a manual backup in case the black box somehow fails."

 

"It's definitely him?" John asked, hardly daring to hope.

 

"The make and model number of the plane comes encoded in the message it gives out." Root had barely finished her sentence when the blinking dot on the monitor disappeared and never returned.

 

Shaw made her entrance shortly afterwards, far too chipper. "You're both so hung up on Finch." She teased.

 

John grit his teeth, shook his head. "I'm _sick_ of losing him."

 

Shaw raised an eyebrow. "Then let's get him back."

 

"How?"

 

She looked at Root. "We still have those coordinates?"

 

Root nodded.

 

Shaw grinned at John. "Call Lionel and cry off your day job. I'm a criminal, I stole a helicopter."


	4. Chapter 4

Within five minutes, John was packed and ready to go.

"I'll stay here in case there's another number." Root suggested, as she watched them rushing around making preparations.

Shaw zipped up her bag, then came to stand close and brushed her free hand over the back of Root's shoulder. "You happy doing that? While we go off and have adventures?"

"While we go save Finch's life." John corrected her.

Root nodded. "Someone needs to keep an eye on Harold's irrelevants. I'll also see what I can dig up about Samaritan's plans."

"Okay. Bother Fusco if you need help." Shaw told her, squeezing her arm.

"Take care, you two." Root said quite sincerely as they made their way towards the exit.

John frowned, still unsure how to handle this relatively new side of Root. "You sound like Finch."

\---

As they trudged back up the beach towards the jungle, Hurley asked "How are we going to explain you two to everyone back at camp?" The likeness really was striking. Harold was more sun-burnt, and carrying a little more weight around the middle, but apart from that, they were virtually indistinguishable.

"We'll have to tell them we're long lost brothers." Ben quipped. Then he looked more seriously at Harold. "We're not, are we?"

Harold shuddered. "I hope not." He'd managed without family for over forty years, the last thing he needed now was to acquire a psychotic twin.

Ben looked thoughtful. “I should probably apologize, for earlier. If we’re not related, the other possibility - and the one that I jumped to - is that my likeness has been copied by a…spirit of the island. We have a checkered history.”

"Are you trying to tell me," Finch said, amused by the bizarre coincidence, "that this island is alive?"

Ben cast him an appraising glance. "You catch on quickly."

Harold said dryly "I have some experience in these matters."

"How?"

Harold hesitated, then confessed. "I built a machine that can think for itself."

\---

When they reached the quiet airfield it was gone midnight. More than eighteen hours had passed since Reese had last seen Finch. He was anxious, and unable to hide it. Shaw wanted to fly the helicopter and John was grateful and relieved that she would do that.

“We’ll get him back, Reese,” Shaw said gruffly as they strapped themselves in.

Her take-off wasn't the smoothest, but John hardly noticed. He was too busy dealing with the sudden swell of fond admiration he was feeling for Shaw, which her earnest attempt to reassure him had produced.

\---

To Harold’s surprise, the camp which Ben and Hurley led him to was more like a township. There were actual houses, made of bricks and mortar, not mud. He realized that this island must have been inhabited for a good many years.

He was introduced to the fellow survivors of his plane crash. Adults were sitting relaxed on the front porches and there were children playing on the swings. The normality of it unnerved him somehow, as though they had forgotten that they had all so recently been through a tremendous trauma.

The first person to approach him was called Pat. They shook Harold’s hand and offered him a plate of barbecued chicken wings. He graciously accepted, joining them at a picnic table in one of the backyards. He hadn't eaten much on the island apart from the mangoes. Pat told Harold they were 43 years old, had been traveling from New York to Hong Kong to visit family there. Harold explained his own profession and began to ask more questions. As Pat and Harold talked, others nearby heard them and joined in with their own tales. Before long he was surrounded by a small crowd. They asked him how he got separated from everyone else, and there was some suspicion and disbelief when he explained that he had been alone in the plane’s front section.

Questions about his resemblance to Ben came later. During their walk, Ben had eventually decided (with some persuasion from Hurley) that they shouldn't mislead the group. Harold was clueless to the explanation and was to present it as a mystery.

“Did you never look up your family history?” An older man named Jerry asked him.

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Harold told him. One of the tests he had done while developing the Machine was to check that it could collate birth and death certificates and find the links between them. His own family tree had spanned outwards and upwards on the screen; he discovered he had distant roots in both Ireland and Germany. And there was no record of him ever having had a brother or even a step-brother. It seemed very unlikely that the Machine would have missed such a thing.

He said none of this to the group. During the journey back to camp, Ben had pressed him on the Machine’s scope and function and Harold had grown uncomfortable with his increasingly perceptive questioning. His doppelgänger seemed to know more than a little about surveillance himself, and the way he’d mentioned having multiple passports…it seemed probable that in a former life Ben had been a spy. So what, in that case, was he doing here?

Hurley rescued him from his convoluted musings. "Hey, dude. I found you some new glasses. They’ll make it easier to tell you two apart." The large oval frames were made of mottled plastic, with a brown-and-yellow wavy pattern.

“Thank you,” Harold said, and slid them on. He blinked in discomfort: the prescription was all wrong. He was better off without them. Removing them swiftly, he let an excitable six-year-old snatch them from his fingers.

Hurley attempted to chastise the boy, but he was long gone, having run off to show the spectacles to his friends.

“That’s odd,” Harold said. “I've worn glasses all my life.”

“Yeah, that happens sometimes,” Hurley sighed. “I went to check with the light.”

Harold was growing frustrated with his lack of control over information. It wasn't often he found himself totally without bearings. “The light is…?”

“Power source for the island,” Hurley said, folding his arms. “It has a… kind of soul, like Ben said. It makes decisions about people’s fate.”

“…And mine is?”

“Inconclusive.” Hurley replied, with a puzzled frown. To Harold’s alarmed stare, he stammered “I'm sorry, I can’t help that! It wouldn't tell me.”

“Ben said something about me being ‘Chosen’. What does that mean?”

“It does kind of seem like…with how your injuries are all gone and everything…”

Another disturbed twinge in Harold’s stomach. He didn't like where this was going. He prodded impatiently. “Yes?”

“The Island wants you to be happy here,” Hurley continued, with obvious reluctance. “Maybe even wants you to stay, like me.”

“Stay here? For how long?”

Hurley’s shoulders were hunched over. He was digging a small hole in the sandy soil with the toe of his sneakers.

Harold heard his own voice turn darker. Anger was bubbling up inside him, fueled by desperation. “How long have you been here, Hugo?”

Hurley flinched. “Don’t call me that. Only Ben’s allowed to call me that.”

Harold recognized that he had pushed too hard. He took a deep breath and made his body language as non-confrontational as he could. “I'm sorry. But I can’t stay here. I have urgent business back home. I need to get back to John and the numbers.”

Abruptly, Hurley sat up straight again. "The numbers? What numbers?"


End file.
